The Options

Users with ATI cards have the following driver options:

vesa - very basic, lacks 2D/3D acceleration, and focuses on compatibility with all VESA-compliant graphics cards. It is good for starting the GUI environment when no accelerated driver is available/working and little else.

ati - actually a thin wrapper that will invoke the radeon driver (or another ati open-source driver for pre-Radeon cards).

radeon - open source driver supporting all Radeon cards. This driver has excellent 2D acceleration and compatibility with the Linux graphics stack. 3D acceleration is sufficient for desktop effects and a nice set of native Linux games. Power management is now comparable to the Catalyst driver.

Installing Proprietary Drivers a.k.a. Catalyst/fglrx

PLEASE READ FIRST!

Which cards are no longer supported by ATI?
The ATI Radeon 9500-9800, Xpress200-1250, 690G, 740G, X300-X2500 (including Mobility RadeonHD 2300, since it is really a DirectX 9 part). See the complete list here.
If your card is on that list, you are limited to open-source drivers on Ubuntu Lucid/10.04 (and later). If you really need the proprietary Catalyst/fglrx driver, you will have to use an older Linux distribution, such as Debian Lenny/5.0.x or Ubuntu Hardy/8.04.x.

ATTENTION RADEON USERS

NOTE: If you enter your card information on AMD/ATI's driver page, it will offer you the Catalyst 9-3 driver to download. However, the Catalyst 9-3 driver doesn't support X servers past 1.5, and it will not work with Natty! !!!SO BE CAREFUL!!! If you tried to install Catalyst on a system with one of these cards, see the 'Removing the Driver' section to restore the default/pre-installed drivers.

Restricted Drivers Manager

NOTE: You must have the restricted repository enabled in Applications -> Ubuntu Software Center -> Edit -> Software Sources... for this to work. You must also have the fglrx-modaliases and jockey-gtk (or jockey-kde for Kubuntu) packages installed. You will be limited to the drivers for your version of Ubuntu that Canonical deems stable. This may not give you the latest drivers, but should be safest. On Ubuntu Natty, this will install Catalyst 8.840, which is roughly equivalent to a prerelease of Catalyst 11-4. Go to the Additional Drivers Manager (System -> Administration -> Additional Drivers) and activate the "ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver" (or double-click the "available driver" notification icon). Ubuntu will then install and configure the driver for you.

Installing the drivers manually

I recommend copying and pasting the commands (do not include the leading '$') to ensure there are no typing mistakes and speed up the install process. Remember to use Ctrl + Shift + V or Shift + Insert to paste into the terminal (or go to the terminals menu, select edit and click paste).

Create .deb packages.

Install .debs.

$ sudo dpkg -i fglrx*.deb

Generate a new /etc/X11/xorg.conf file

Unfortunately, there is no sure way to generate the ATI version of the Xorg.conf file. It is entirely dependent on your configuration. The following subsections will attempt to address possible (and tested) variations for their respective configurations.

Generic Config

This will work for most people:

$ sudo amdconfig --initial -f

Minimal Config

A very basic /etc/X11/xorg.conf file might be what you need if you have a new card that's not fully supported by amdconfig. Here follows the entirety of a minimal xorg.conf file for the Radeon 6870:

Force use of the new xorg.conf (if necessary)

Some people find that changes to xorg.conf don't get used by the driver. To force the ATI driver to adopt changes made to xorg.conf, use the following command:

$ sudo amdconfig --input=/etc/X11/xorg.conf --tls=1

Test your installation

NOTE: if you don't reboot first, fglrxinfo gives an error message.
Reboot the computer and type

$ fglrxinfo

into the terminal. If the vendor string contains ATI, you have installed the driver successfully. Using fglrxinfo on a system with Catalyst 11-4 and a RadeonHD 4250 returns:

display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI Radeon HD 4200 Series (This line may be different depending on what graphics card you are using.)
OpenGL version string: 3.3.10665 Compatibility Profile Context (This line may be different depending on what graphics card and
Catalyst version you are using.)

Now, try:

$ fgl_glxgears

If you experience issues or a hang, you may need to disable fast TLS.

$ sudo amdconfig --tls=0

Just in case

Write down or remember this series of Alt+PrntScr key combinations, just in case your screen should go black and Ctrl+Alt+F1 and Ctrl+Alt+Backspace doesn't work.

These key-presses will reboot the system safely. To remember the key-presses, remember this nonsensical phrase: "Raising Skinny Elephants Is Never Utterly Boring".

An alternative would be to hold down Ctrl+Alt+SysRq (SysRq is usually the same key as PrintScreen) and type very slowly R E I S U B. A way to remember this is by inverting the word: "BUSIER" or remembering a phrase: "Restart Even If System Utterly Broken". This would also safely shutdown the system.

Updating Catalyst/fglrx

DO NOT try to install a new version over an old one. Follow the 'Removing Catalyst/fglrx' section below to remove your existing driver, and then you can start at 'Downloading the latest Catalyst' to install the new one.

Removing Catalyst/fglrx

The uninstall script in the first command will only exist if you downloaded the drivers and installed the directly (rather than building packages as this guide does). Skip the first command if it does not exist.

If you plan on using open-source drivers, you will need to reinstall some packages because Catalyst overwrites or diverts some key 3D libraries with proprietary versions. For more information on this issue, see this Ubuntu wiki page

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